Tag Archives: water pollution

Indonesian wins international prize for river clean-up

Indonesia

A biologist who enlisted schoolchildren in his fight to clean up an Indonesian river that led to an international prize said he hoped young people will do more for the environment.

Student research into a 41 km stretch of the Surabaya River that flows through Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, prompted 35-year-old PrigiArisandi into discoveries that helped him become one of six winners of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s largest award for grassroots environmentalists.

Arisandi found that the river, which provides water for three million and is also used for bathing by people living along its banks, was contaminated with high levels of toxic effluent. Recently, mercury levels were found to be 100 times the limit set by the World Health Organization.

He and other activists created the first environmental education program in the region in 2000 to educate local communities about biodiversity and water pollution, teaching students about the dangers and using them to spread the word. “These students are the victims of pollution,”Arisandi told Reuters at his Surabaya office last week. “We place these children as agents of change… We bring them to the river and there are already thousands of children that we have trained.”

Arisandi and other activists have also taken legal action to stop companies from polluting the river and won a case against East Java’s governor, who was ordered to reduce pollution. The $150,000 prize, named after husband and wife philanthropists from San Francisco, honors individuals for sustained efforts to protect the natural environment “often at great personal risk,” according to the prize’s website.

The other 2011 winners are from the United States, Zimbabwe, Germany, Russia and El Salvador.

Firth and his Wife go green on Oscar’s red carpet

Colin-Firth-and-Livia

At the 83rd Academy Awards, actor Colin Firth not only stole the show with accolades for his The King’s Speech performance but for his eco-friendly attire.

As always, Firth and his wife Livia donned environment-friendly outfits at the Oscars and this year they did it recycled style in order to raise awareness for recycled fashion.

Livia, who founded Fair-trade boutique Eco Age, wore an amazing paneled gown recycled from old dresses on the red carpet while Colin made a Tom Ford suit made of ethical materials look better than good. “It defies what you normally see on the red carpet. It’s really  beautiful — it’s pretty but also has a message,” said Livia.

International accords on saving forests have little impact

forest

International accords on saving vulnerable forests are having little impact because they do not attack the core causes such as growing demand for bio-fuels and food crops, a new report said.

With Africa and South American alone losing 7.4 million hectares of forest a year, the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) said a drastic change of policy is needed by the United Nations and governments.

Sixty international experts said in the report, to be presented at a UN forum this week that too much attention is being put on forests as a store of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for global warming.

Deforestation accounts for about a quarter of the global greenhouse gas emissions each year which are blamed for rising temperatures. Live trees act as a sponge for carbon but give it off when they decay or are burned.

“Our findings suggest that disregarding the impact on forests of sectors such as agriculture and energy will doom any new international efforts to conserve forests and slow climate change,” said Jeremy Rayner chairman of the IUFRO report panel.

Even the most recent UN backed initiative, Reducing Deforestation in Developing countries (REDD) is criticized because the panel said it seeks a single global solution.

The experts said that REDD and other international accords should focus more on supporting regional and national efforts to save the forests at risk.

“Unless all sectors work together to address the impact of global consumption, growing demand for food and bio-fuels, and problems of land scarcity, REDD will fail to arrest environmental degradation and will heighten poverty,” said Constance McDermott of Oxford University’s Environmental Change  Institute.

Pollution renders quarter of Chinas water unusable

Almost a quarter of China’s surface water remains so polluted that it is unfit even for industrial use, while less than half of total supplies are drinkable, data from the environment watchdog showed on July 26. Inspectors from China’s Ministry of environmental Protection tested water samples from the country’s major rivers and lakes in the first half of the year and declared just 49.3 per cent to be safe for drinking, up from 48 per cent last year, the ministry said in a notice posted on its website. CHINA_Water_Pollution

China classifies its water supplies using six grades, with the first three grades considered safe for drinking and bathing. Another 26.4 per cent was said to be categories IV and V – fit only for use in industry and agriculture – leaving 24.3 per cent in category VI and unfit for any purpose. Despite tougher regulations over the last decade, the ministry has struggled to rein in the thousands of small paper mills, cement factories and chemical plants discharging industrial waste directly into the country’s waterways, and the overuse of fertilizers has also left large sections of China’s lakes and rivers chocking with algae.